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pretty bad at sneaking around. He’s known for being a tightwad, but he just spent his retirement money on a house in France. And he’s been telling everyone he’s sick, but he hasn’t been to the doctor in four years.”  
    Her jovial mood evaporated, and she shivered. “The trouble is, I don’t just have to watch him. You get to buddy up with that junior hottie, I have to actually come on to this specimen of grossness.”
    “Is grossness a word?” He certainly fit the bill.
    “It is now.” She glanced at the TV and frowned. “We’re trying to spook him a little. So, I’m working with him on coordinating the Symposium, and I am,” she winced, “inexplicably attracted to him.”
    I examined my aunt, and then the loser on the screen. “No way is he going to believe that.”
    “Well, that’s kinda the point. We figured he probably has poor social functioning based on his history. So a pretty woman is going to make him uncomfortable. A pretty woman coming on to him should scare the bejesus out of him.”
    I tried to focus on Christie. I didn’t want to ruin my appetite. “I thought Mom made that word up.”
    “Bejesus?” She waved dismissively. “No, it’s been around. It’s one of my personal favorites.” She hit a button to clear the screen.
    “So you’re hitting on him?” Unfortunately, his face remained etched in my brain, scabby hairline and all.
    “Yep.” She nodded. “Asking him to lunch, flirting with him while we work, hitting on him at his favorite bar.”
    Now I was following. “Where Nic works?”
    “Exactly. He spends his evening there, so Nic covers that, while I cover his days.”
    “How long have you been doing this?” I asked.
    “Three weeks now. We haven’t made much progress but we expect Dr. Ivan to crack soon. If we knew the hacker’s identity, we’d have an easier time.”
    “It’s not Will is it?” He was the only hacker I knew.
    “No,” she assured me. “We stumbled onto Will while searching for a suspect. But Will’s style is different. It’s not him.”
    “So who invented the truth serum?”
    “We did,” she admitted.
    “GASI?” Man, they had a lot going on.
    “No, the government.”
    “Our government? How’d it get stolen?”
    “Well, it was too powerful to make because of the risk of it falling in the wrong hands. So they canceled the project. But, somehow an old computer still had the file, and it got networked by accident, and voila , stolen formula.” She seemed resigned to it. 
    “Aren’t there already truth serums?”
    “Not like this one, Amanda. This one is bad news.”
    “What happens if they sell it?”
    “It would probably mean a lot of agents would die. The serum is too strong to resist. And it works quickly. By the time you realize you’ve been dosed with it, complacency has set in, and you can’t fight it.”
    “So you actually have to talk to that guy all day.” I motioned to the blank screen.
    She closed her eyes. “I have to touch him too.”
    “Ooh.” I didn’t know it was that kind of agency.
    “Yep. Brush my arm against his. Touch his hand. Find excuses to linger.” She shook her head quickly as if to wipe a picture from an Etch A Sketch.
    “Barf.”
    “It’s pretty awful.” She grinned. “But, it’s funny to watch him. It really freaks him out. He turns kind of purple and looks around to see if anyone notices. I like to call the investigation, ‘Flirting with the Mangy Rat.’”
    “I guess that sums it up pretty well.” I thought for a minute. “Then, mine should be ‘Investigating the Hottie.’”
    She reached out to squeeze my shoulder. “Perfect.”
    “I’ll bet you wish we could trade.”
    “Oh, yeah. But your suspect isn’t eighteen yet, and this chemist guy has a history suspicious for violent behavior.”
    “So Will isn’t capable of violence?” Thank goodness.
    “Oh, no,” she responded matter-of-factly. “He probably is. He just hasn’t shown it